


I can do better (we can be better)

by regrettably



Category: Fanxychild, Khiphop, Show Me the Money (Korea TV)
Genre: M/M, really brief mentions of the rest of fanxychild
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-28 23:57:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15060596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regrettably/pseuds/regrettably
Summary: To Jung Dongwook, the epitome of cool is definitely not having a nerve-induced identity crisis in a bathroom stall right before you’re supposed to go on stage.





	I can do better (we can be better)

**Author's Note:**

> if you thought the dpr fic was niche and awful  
> too bad because it just gets more niche and more awful from here on in

 

“Seriously, are you like, taking a shit or something?” A fist connects with poorly attached metal, the door rattles on its hinges, and miserable Jung Dongwook nearly drops his cigarette in the toilet.

 

Fuck.  Of all the people to come find him.

 

“I’m not!  I’m just- just…” ...just what?  “I just need to piss, alright? Can you give me, like, a minute?”

 

As if that’d happen.  Not with where he is. Not with what time it is.

 

Not with Apro.

 

“Do you always smoke while you piss?” Apro’s voice, a lot less frustrated than it should sound, echoes off the walls in the tiny bathroom, reverberates through the strung-out spaces in Dongwook’s head.  “Also, that’s what you said almost twenty minutes ago.”

 

Well, shit.  So he did. 

 

He can’t believe he’s going to be late to his own concert.

 

His first solo concert, at that.  

 

That’s a funny thought, really.  “Solo”. As if Jiho and Hyoseob and Seunghyun and Mintaek and a whole bunch of infinitely more talented and personable and worthy people aren’t just sitting around in the wings and waiting.

 

As if all the fans standing in the pit aren’t really there because of Jiho and Hyoseob and the name Fanxy Child.

 

As if anyone’s actually here to see whoever the fuck Penomeco is.

 

And that’s fair.

 

Because right now Dongwook doesn’t know himself.  Right now Penomeco is a lot more like Jung Dongwook than Jung Dongwook would like.  A sweaty, short, nicotine-dependent, self-loathing wreck with a fat face and a dumb lip ring and stupid dyed hair and ugly crooked teeth who’s having some sort of ridiculous existential crisis backstage in the bathroom when he’s supposed to be out there, finally, finally having his turn in the spotlight, finally proving to them all he can do it, finally showing that all his hard work was actually for something.  Finally.

 

“Okay, you know what?”  Apro says, jiggling the stall door handle, “How ‘bout you let me in?”

 

“What?!”  Dongwook panic-contorts in the cramped stall so he can push against the door with the bottom of his foot, “No?”

 

Why?  Why did it have to be Apro?

 

If it had been Jiho, he’d have just told him to get his shit together; that all these fucking anxieties and near-breakdowns are just the price you pay to be the person whose name is plastered all over the outside of the venue.  But Jiho hasn’t lived away from all of this in what almost seems like a lifetime, probably doesn’t even remember what it’s like to feel this way.

 

Hyoseob would’ve said that he needs to just chill; that there’s nothing to be that worried about, that no matter what he does the fans are still going to cheer all the same.  But that’s probably pretty easy to say when you’re Crush.

 

Either of them would have been better because people that are on the levels those two are can’t get it. 

 

They don’t understand that it’s not the music.  The music is good. He knows it is.

 

It’s him.

 

Every day it’s harder and harder to be Penomeco.

 

Penomeco boasts all the damn time, swaggers around the stage like he owns it, says all kinds of shit that Jung Dongwook knows deep down simply isn’t true.  Jung Dongwook is just one in a million Korean kids that listened to music from the States and dreamed of a life without hagwons and test scores and being a disappointment to their parents.  One more in a long line of Show Me the Money casualties whose career is probably going to peak right here, being what basically amounts to an extended opening act for Block B’s Zico. 

 

If it had been Jiho and Hyoseob, they’d have looked at him and just seen stage fright; those pre-fame nerves that can only be killed by living the vast majority of your life under the terrifying scrutiny of barely-legal college students and dudes who spend the kind of money that he’d like to give to his mom on sneakers.

 

With them, he could play this off as just another funny mood, because he’s  _ artistic _ and  _ sensitive _ and whatever other bullshit people think about him.

 

But no, it had to be Apro.  

 

“Why not?  If you are taking a piss, it’s not like I’ve never seen a dude pissing before-”

 

“...what?”

 

“-and if you’re not, I don’t see what the problem is?”

 

Not just the person who does everything for Dongwook: mixes his songs, DJs for damn near every show, fixes all his fuck-ups, makes him into who he wants to be.  Not just beyond talented and ridiculously hardworking and touched by genius, a sprinkling of that same genius that’s in people like Jooyoung, people who peer into different dimensions and use those glimpses to make  _ music _ ; that genius that manifests itself downright blood-curdling in people like Samuel Seo, whose thoughts  _ make _ those different dimensions, he’s also…

 

“The problem is you coming in here!  Don’t!” Dongwook kicks the door for emphasis and Apro stops pulling on the handle for long enough that Dongwook thinks he might have just given up.

 

“Okay, if you won’t let me in-” A scuffling sound comes from the other side of the door, “-then I’ll come in all by myself.”

 

...really just the last person Dongwook would ever want to see him like this.  See him being too close to himself.

 

“You wouldn’t.”

 

A pair of knobbly knees appears in the space between the bottom of the stall door and the ground and Dongwook’s reminded that Apro’s also totally the kind of person who would get down on a mouldy bathroom floor in jeans that cost at least five hundred thousand won without even taking a second to think about how fucking stupid it is to get down on the ground in jeans that cost at least five hundred thousand won.

 

“I would, and I am.  I am literally going to crawl under this door if you don’t let me in in the next ten seconds.  Ten, nine, eight...”

 

“Hyung…”

 

A skinny hand snakes its way into the stall.  “...seven, six, five…”

 

“Come on, don’t…”   


 

“...four, three, two…”  Apro sticks his head under the door.

 

Dongwook knows when he’s lost.  

 

“Fuck, fine!”  He clenches his cigarette in his lips and unlatches the lock before Apro can finish his countdown, showering both himself and the back of Apro’s head with ashes.

 

Apro wipes at his hair as he straightens his legs and greets Dongwook with a grin, squeezing into the stall between Dongwook and the toilet and locking the door behind him.

 

“Hey.” He says, simple, like it’s totally normal to be crushed up against each other in a bathroom stall.  Why he’s smiling, Dongwook really couldn’t say. Apro’s got kind of a funny smile on his kind of funny face: small eyes, sallow cheeks, wild hair.  A mouth that’s always sort of open, like it’s too small to hold all of his teeth. Way too thin where Dongwook’s way too wide. Dongwook sometimes thinks it’s the nicest face he’s ever seen.  Especially when he’s smiling.

 

“Hey.” Dongwook repeats, because he’s not sure what else he can say.

 

Apro looks him up and down. “You good?”

 

Dongwook can’t look back, focuses on Apro’s feet between his own. “Yeah, ‘m good.”

 

Anybody else would look at him, see the cigarette burning to a stub in his fingertips, the bleached hair matted to his forehead, the makeup that’s melted straight off his face and been reduced to sweaty blotches on his neck and know that obviously he’s  _ not good _ .  But because it’s Apro it’s the weird little waver in his voice that gives it away.  Apro purses his lips shut over all of his big teeth the second he hears that wobble, gets that look on his face that he usually only wears when they’re in the studio together and something doesn’t sound exactly the way he imagines it should.

 

Then it’s way too quiet, because Apro’s just listening.  Like he always does, always has. From the first time they met, he’s been the only person Dongwook’s ever thought has listened to him and actually heard him.  Heard what some wannabe rapper really wanted to say and helped him say just that. And right now he’s picking up everything around them: the sound of paper burning to dust, a faucet dripping steady and slow, the distant murmur of a hundred voices waiting.  He hears it all and he’s piecing it all together and Dongwook says nothing because he doesn’t want to give Apro any more to work with.

 

In the beginning Dongwook thought Apro was incredible.  How he could listen to it all, take it all in, hear  _ everything _ .  

 

But the closer they get and the more Dongwook and Penomeco start to blend into one person, the more Dongwook worries that one day Apro will hear something he really doesn’t like.

 

And he doesn’t want to do this without Apro, doesn’t want to go out there and face everyone when if they knew, if they really knew who he was, they wouldn’t even be here in the first place and-

 

Maybe Apro listens so well that he can hear thoughts.

 

“It’s cool, y’know?” Apro snatches the remains of the cigarette out of Dongwook’s hand.  Dongwook nearly tears out his lip ring in surprise.

 

“Huh?”

 

Apro smiles around the smoke as he takes a long drag.  “You. You’re cool.”   


 

Dongwook laughs.  Maybe he’s been freaking out for so long that he’s starting to hallucinate.  “Me?”

 

Apro leans forwards, places the cigarette between Dongwook’s trembling lips.  He has to cup Dongwook’s jaw to do it; calloused thumb rubbing against his cheekbone.  Dongwook knows he must have actually lost his mind.

 

“Yeah, you.” Apro nods, hot under all his layers of designer clothes.  Sweat is starting to shine on his temples and he’s so close that Dongwook feels the heat wafting off his face, “Like, I’ve worked with a lot of artists... and so many people here, doing this, the longer they do it the more they become… I don’t know, somebody else?”

 

Dongwook can’t do anything but inhale nicotine.

 

“But you,” Apro continues, “You used to be somebody else.  And every day you do this, it’s like you become a little more like yourself.  And that’s really cool.”

 

Dongwook holds his breath.

 

“‘cause I think you’re at your best when you’re just… you.”

 

Apro puts a hand on Dongwook’s shoulder.  His fingers are long and bony and it feels like they burn Dongwook from his collarbones up to his ears, scald him so bad he can’t hear or think anymore.  The cigarette slips from his mouth and lands on the tile floor and Dongwook exhales, licks of smoke curling around Apro’s face and he looks so good that Dongwook goes and says the last thing he wants Apro to ever hear.

 

“I-I… you…” Or at least he tries to say it.  He can’t even manage that, watches Apro listen to the high nasal syllables he’s stuttering out and screw his eyebrows up tight as he tries to assemble some sort of meaning, “...I…”

 

And then he remembers that actions are supposed to speak louder than words.  Or something.

 

He fumbles shaking fingers into the collar of Apro’s stupid expensive shirt and stands on his toes and shows Apro who Jung Dongwook really is.  By kissing him.

 

Apro’s face feels like it’s melting slick with sweat against his and his lips taste like ash and flat soda but all Dongwook can process is sound; hears nothing except the little “ _ Oh. _ ” that escapes from Apro’s mouth and singes that noise into his memory permanently. 

 

Dongwook reels backwards so fast at the sound he hits the back of his head against the metal of the stall.  

 

“Shit.” He starts, and it all comes flooding out.  Apro blinks at him. “Shit shit shit holy fuck shit I am so, so, so sorry, I don’t even fucking know what I wa-”

 

Apro puts a finger on Dongwook’s lips.

 

“Shh.  Weren’t you listening to me?” He asks, drawls it out nice and slow, “I like you best when you’re yourself.”

 

It’s Dongwook’s turn to blink.  “What?”

 

This time Apro doesn’t have anything to say.  He curls gentle fingertips into Dongwook’s sweaty hair and pulls him close and Dongwook tastes smoke and sugar laced with caffeine again and he finally realizes that Apro’s not only just always heard him and listened; he’s heard him, listened, and  _ understood _ .

 

Apro’s lips are on his and then gone again way too fast for Dongwook’s liking.  But Apro grins as he pulls away, his entire tiny face splitting into a happy mass of big teeth.

 

“So, you good?”   


 

Dongwook doesn’t have to think about it.  He grins back, showing off a mouthful of jumbled teeth wider than he’s ever dared to before.

 

“Yeah, ‘m good.”

 

“Cool.  Then go, you’ve got a concert to do.” Apro unlocks the stall door, gives Dongwook a little shove.  “Don’t worry, I’ll be right behind you.”

 

Apro’s fingers catch Dongwook’s for just a second, squeezing tight, then Dongwook goes.

 

He gets a clean shirt, wipes the sweat off his face, and walks right out on stage while Jiho and Hyoseob and Seunghyun and Mintaek and a whole bunch of other really talented and worthy people watch.

 

He boasts pretty much all of the damn time, swaggers around the stage like he owns it, says a whole bunch of shit.  He’s not sure anymore if he’s Penomeco or Jung Dongwook or someone in-between.

 

But when he looks over his shoulder, Apro’s right behind him, smiling as his fingers fly over the mixers.  

 

Dongwook smiles back and decides it doesn’t really matter.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


(and then he goes and wins breakers lol)  END


End file.
